Flashback: Rove Erases 22 Million White House Emails on Private Server at Height of U.S. Attorney Scandal – Media Yawns

Jon Ponder

Rove

Now that they’ve taken control of Congress, Republicans are wielding power much the same way they did in the Clinton era and for the six years afterward when they controlled the White House and Congress under George W. Bush: ineptly — examples: 1, 2 etc.

Then as now, it’s clear that the only thing Republicans do very well is inflame the media withbogusscandals — which is a handy way to distract attention from their ineptitude. They are doing this with their usual aplomb, and considerable success, in the matter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to send emails.

Clinton has said she deleted about 50,000 emails that dealt with personal matters, citing her daughter’s wedding and her mother’s funeral as examples. All the correspondence pertaining to official business was turned over to and archived by State. The deletion of the emails, though perfectly legal, has excited House Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner, who has announced plans to deploy House committees to investigate what might aptly be called Servergate.

Never mind that former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican, has said he used a system similar to Clinton’s — and never mind that in 2007 Karl Rove deleted 22 million emails from a private server in the Bush White House — a matter about which the Beltway media said little and Republicans in Congress, like Rep. John Boehner, said nothing.

Here is a brief refresher on the White House email scandal:

Not long after George W. Bush assumed the presidency in 2001, Rove, his top political aide, set up a private email server for use in the White House. The stated purpose of the system — the primary domain name on which was gwb43.com — was that it would be used exclusively for the sort of political correspondence that Bush and Rove were not permitted to do on the taxpayer’s dime.

Seven years later, Bush and Rove were embroiled in two competing scandals — the Valerie Plame scandal, in which operatives for Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, including Rove and Scooter Libby, were accused of unmasking Valerie Plame, a CIA specialist in the black market for weapons of mass destruction, for purely partisan reasons, and the U.S. Attorney purge, in which Rove’s political operation in the White House was accused of ordering Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to purge eight U.S. attorneys who were qualified prosecutors and replace them with political hacks with little or no prosecutorial experience.

Rove escaped prosecution in the Libby case, but Libby was convicted (Bush quickly commuted the sentence) on March 6, 2007, at the same time Bush and Rove were under fire for purging the U.S. attorneys. During the investigation, it came to light that Rove’s server had been used to send official, non-political emails — correspondence that was required by law to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act.

On April 12, 2007, Rove’s operation admitted that it had deleted at least 5 million emails from the server. In December 2009, technicians who had examined the server reported that the number of emails that had been deleted was far greater — 22 million.

What was in the emails? No one will ever know. It’s likely as not that there was incriminating evidence in the correspondence that tied Rove and others to the treasonous exposure of Agent Plame (which, at a minimum, was a violation of government security), the U.S. attorneys’ purge and perhaps other scandals, including the inquiry into charges that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff had used his entre with others in the GOP to bribe government officials. Abramoff was in prison serving the first year of his sentence when the email scandal broke.

If nothing else, this appears to be a prima facie case (or, rather, 22 million cases) of obstruction of justice. How serious is obstruction of justice? It’s the crime Pres. Richard Nixon was charged with by the House of Representatives in 1974 that prompted him to resign rather than face impeachment.

But what sort of evidence might have been lost in the 50,000 emails Hillary Clinton deleted? The insinuation from Republicans is that something dispositive about the Benghazi scandal might have been erased. It’s hard to guess what that might have been. What the GOP seems to be looking for in its eight investigations into Benghazi, so far, is a stand-down order issued by the State Department or the White House to the military that left the Benghazi consulate vulnerable to the attack that ensued. These Republicans know, of course, that the Secretary of State doesn’t have the authority to issue orders to the military.

Given that, there’s no question that the coverage of the Clinton email “scandal” is out of scale, but how does the incessant media coverage today stack up against the scandal seven years ago when Rove’s political operation in the White House erased 22 million emails many of which likely included evidence of serious crimes?

Last week, the fact-checking organization Politifact, which tends to skew to the right, compared coverage of the two scandals. Here’s it’s verdict:

We did a search through Lexis-Nexis, a research service that tracks news articles and transcripts, between March and May 2007. We found more than 125 transcripts from the major cable networks and National Public Radio that include “Republican National Committee” and “email” within 10 words of each other.

The Lexis-Nexis search also yielded more than 200 related newspaper articles across the country within the same time frame.

Let’s compare that to coverage of the Clinton controversy.

Since the story broke March 3, 2015 — two weeks ago — we found 204 cable and public radio transcripts that include “Clinton” and “email.” We also found 1,700 newspaper articles across the country.

That’s several times as many articles and transcripts about Clinton than there were about the Bush email controversy in a quarter of the time. It’s a rough measurement, but clearly there has been more media attention on Clinton’s use of private email than that of the White House staffers.

Even so, Politifact rated the claim that coverage of Clinton’s email deletions is out of scale compared with coverage of Rove’s in 2007 is “mostly false.”

Wait. What?

In the Rove scandal, there were 125 broadcast reports and 200 newspaper articles over three months about the millions of deleted emails. Today, in just two weeks there have been 200 broadcast reports and 1,700 newspaper articles about the 50,000 deleted emails.

And yet Politifact finds the assertion that there’s been more coverage of Clinton than there was of Rove to be “mostly false.” How did they do that?

Simple. Politifact keyed its verdict to a Fox pundit’s hyperbolic statement there was “zero coverage” of Rove’s scandal when it broke. So, yeah, it’s “mostly false” that there was “zero coverage.”

Republicans’ objective in using its lapdogs in the “liberal media” to exaggerate the Clinton emails controversy is to damage her image in advance of her run for the presidency. Polls show that their strategy is working — while Hillary Clinton remains the odds-on favorite among Democratic voters, her approval rating has slipped among all voters in polls released since the email deletions came to light.

389 Comments

I am appalled that people think it was okay for Vice President Cheney to destroy thousands– maybe millions– of emails and let it pass, and yet crucify Hillary for her email server while Secretary of State. It smells to me a lot like Martha Stewart being sent to jail for a $68,000 illegal profit whilst most of Wall Street in 2008 and 2009 crashed the economy with no negative repercussions whatsoever.
Politicians have an obligation to be accountable and demonstrate moral judgement. They also need to comply with the law. And we the public need, likewise, to avoid using double standards like those commended in comments above. It’s clear to me that, in absence of anything too substantive that can be said against Hillary– except that she has made mistakes and is a woman– we take these things that frankly everyone else in the pool has been doing and make her pay for it. Well, here’s an idea, then. Police everyone equally. Period.

While Republicans scandal-mongered over Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, the FIRST bombing of the Twin Towers took place in 1993. But instead of following up on that true threat to our national security, the Starr Commission spent over $240 million chasing underpants. By the time the SECOND bombing happened in 2001, there were over 35,000 pages of UNSTRANSLATED testimony from the 1993 bombing that had not been read or analyzed by anyone. So I fail to see how the Clintons– even in their moments of stupid behavior– did worse by the American poeple than the people like multiple-divorced Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and the Republican Double Standard Team, who have been creating diversions from life and death issues for decades now.

Hillary isn’t running for saint. She’s running for President. Why is that more frightening than a candidate who invites our enemies to attack us? Oh, right. I forgot. That’s the point. There is no “there” there. Since I got to where I am in life without parental millions, I have no respect for such fake and useless scandal mongering.

So your argument is that if Cheney or Rove got away with it then Hillary should be allowed to get away with it? I have an idea, let’s go after all of them instead of demanding that your candidates behavior be justified by the behavior of others.

Surely you joke, i really don’t believe you want to expose how wicked Bush/Cheney were. We all know they lied about WMD and sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths, wounded tens of thousands more and shattered the lives of millions of Irajis. Now you want to talk about Hillary and you have said nothing about Bush/Chaney/Rowe. Hypocrisy as usual.

I hate when people say this. You need to talk to the troops that were there. Get your facts correct.

This was an intelligence failure, not a lie. Come on!
They along with bi-partisan Congress,and British officials, had multiple sources of intelligence that indicated presence of WMDS.

There are videos & testimony showing Iraq shipping their WMDs to Syria. Where do you think Syria GOT their WMDs?

Its fun for people to call Bush a liar. Hillary Clinton saw the same intelligence as Bush, and voted to go to war in Iraq.

Actually the WMDs were NOT THE ONLY reason to go to war in Iraq. Sadaam and his sons killed 100s of thousands of people and operated rape rooms and torture chambers every day.
VP Biden said that Iraq was in GREAT SHAPE & COMMENDED BUSH. If Obama had left a base in Iraq, they’d still be in good shape. Bush left a SOF agreement for Obama to sign, because he didn’t want to determine policy for the new administration. Obama lied & said there was no SOF agreement.

You are wrong on so many points, it is difficult to believe… the Wmd story was created whole cloth by the Bush Ii camp….there was intelligence that said there were no Wmds but they ignored or dicredited or outed a under cover CIA agent in retaliation. Bush negotiated the troop reduction before end of 2nd term ….we created and inflamed ISIS by releasing the Iraqi army and overall mismanagement of the occupation under Bush…

The fact is that there were 29 Tony Blair emails, as revealed in the Chilcot report after a British investigation, that substantiate that Bush and he wanted to go to war 8 months before the invasion of Iraq. If you read the report, you would know that WMD was exaggerated and used in a plan to get buy in to go to war. Those emails are declassified and show that the two planned how they would manipulate the legislative bodies, including other European countries. to justify it instead of exploring non-military options. I think if you study that, you will find that Blair and Bushes made millions of dollars. For instance, through the Carlyle Group, there were substantial investments in weaponry that even included the binLaden family.

No, the general opinion of the normal international Inteligence world, all agreed that there was NO evidence of WMDs, but when Bush and Chany could not get the CIA and the NSA to agree with the “Evidence”, they created their own, using a single source as their evidence, spread this around, and convinced Congress and other World Leaders of its validity, and that we could not take the chance that the information may have been false.
THATS how they convinced everyone to go to war with Sadam!
The real reason, was to open the areas and markets, most notably for Haliburton of the Americans, that had been closed to American and British companies, among others, for very good reasons! It was all for money and Oil!

Actually that’s not true either. The US pressed for the SOF to IRAQ. Iraq is the ones who actually refused to sign the SOF but wanted the US to stay without condititons. The actual fact is that IRAQ wanted the US to leave as well.

Great reply – S Hussein gassed over 100,000 Kurd’s, his own people. His sons were living breathing animals. They got a kick out of grabbing young beautiful college girls and then doing with them as the please and finish off their horrors to dismember them while there were alive. It happened many times. Also, this issues was not 22 million Emails but 22 Thousand of which most were indeed recovered. I was finishing up a military career and there were indeed WMDs and plenty of them Many of our Iraq war vets have continued to suffer from an unknown disease – we all know it was some form of chemical warfare – many of the Sunni’s in the South of Iraq have suffered the same fate.
These stories are out of control and may are even bogus.

This is absolute BS the reason why the Intel was wrong was Cheaney would not except any information that did not support his agenda multiple sources in the CIA and defense department reported that the African connection and the meeting in Prague were not creditable Cheney kept kicking back the reports and would not accept them. Cheney had teams scrambling to find anything that he could use he stretched any possible leads as facts. He knowingly went on the Sunday stump peddling this BS.This is well documented in multiple reports and books written by the men in charge of fact gathering leading up to the war. This man is evil and did it because he thought his world view was the one we should follow . He is a narcissist with that pulled a classic ends justifies the means

Good post Michael, as their were wmd’s, as good old sadam gassed 100k. You don’t need bombs to be considered a wmd. I heard he would go into towns and slowly insert folks into combines. There were alot of countries stating thru intelligence sadam had wmd’s. And there’s hillary, a wmd for americans all by her lonesome

She turn over her e-mail, they didn’t. She was exonerated from them. Wake up, that’s the trouble with you Tumpets! You don’t listen, to anything but lies. They have you so brainwashed, all you see is red. How many years have they had to put an idea in to your head. It was the republicans fault for not giving them the security that they needed by denying them the three million dollars that was needed for more security. You are delusional!

What a bunch of crap saying that the Bush administration helped to recover the emails. The 22 million emails were recovered in after the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (a liberal organization) and another organization took the Bush admin to court in 2007. And, the fact is that there is evidence that President Bush knew about the improper use of emails and did nothing about it. The same Oversight Committee that investigated the Clinton email scandal and no criminal intent was found also investigated Bush’s administration email scandal and the Bush administration refused to give them the emails. And, I might note that the termination of 8 attorneys who were working on the corruption case and it blew wide open landing Karl Rove in hot water and Bush to make his sentence go away. The fact is that about 5,000 emails during this time were recovered and used in criminal cases (unlike Clinton’s that revealed no criminal intent). I might also note that there were sitting on servers at the Republican National Committee. And, that multiple email accounts were used by about 20 White House staff who worked for George W. The emails are at the National Archives.

Where do you get 22 Thousand? Everything I read says it’s 22 million and that 22 million emails were recovered. Unlike Hillary who definitely had classified information in her email account, I have not heard of any of the Bush and Cheney emails that ended up being incriminating.

Excuse me…but Karl Rove isn’t an elected official! How does he even have access to a White House server???? Don;t start to compare Hillary with these criminals. If you want to start we can all go there….let’;s start with the 2 wars that we were lied to about, I’m sure you remember the “Mushroom Cloud” nonsense. Almost as ridiculous as the WMD’s. Wake up.and we’ll go from there. Wake up…the GOP is full of shatttt.

Are you really this uninformed? Do you really think that only elected officials work in the White House? Karl Rove was one of hundreds of staff who worked in the White House. We would have been happy if Karl Rove and other White House staff used a White House server. Instead, they used servers at the Republican National Committee. And, the fact, we can compare the two cases. The same Oversight Committee of Congress that investigated the Clinton emails also investigated the Bush emails. Bush knew about the missing emails and did nothing to restore them. He also terminated eight attorneys who were trying to prosecute his administration. And, crimes WERE committed, Karl Rove was found guilty, and Bush squashed the sentence. I agree that the GOP are full of it.

You are correct – there was no attempt to erase them and the were indeed recovered, unlike those emails that involved Hillary Clinton. Seems that many of those were indeed hacked and are now beginning to surface.

It would appear as though you have not been to a 3rd world country as we have the highest standard of living. In my opinion, the problem is not liberal or conservative but is the voters not paying attention to what is going on in the world and our country. I served in the military and love our country however, the voters are responsible for our position and stop expecting someone else to do the work of voting for them. Get away from the boob tube long enough to vote and research issues not hot button issues that do nothing.

Once great nation. The conservatives have had scandal after scandal. Heck, Reagan had nearly 100 criminal bureacrats that resigned, were indicted, sentenced, and pardon’s by George H.W. Bush. George W. Bush’s White House staff used email servers housed at the Republican National Committee. And, crimes WERE committed and 5,000 of those emails were retrieved in the trials after George W Bush fired 8 attorneys who were investigating his administration and landed Rove in a criminal trial only to be squashed by George W.

Its not a matter of justifying Hillary’s emails, it’s a simply matter of partisan hypocrisy and continued witch hunt. There were twenty three members of the Bush administration that used an email server setup and maintained by the RNC. The investigation committee concluded it’s use was specifically for secrecy not for protect of emails but secrecy from government and investigation of the White House. This is a big difference. ,

no honey our argument is stop spending time and tax payers money on a issue that has been investigated to death. Start spending the tax payers money on issues that still haven’t even been brought to light yet. When they start investigating Rov and bushes deleted emails just as much and hard spending just as much of the tax payers money to investigate it as they have Hillary’s then we will shut up. Until then why don’t they shut up and stop wasting tax payers money on a issue already thoroughly investigated and found no legal wrong doing just to smear someone and suppress the votes of the citizens of America with false allegations.

The big stink about this whole thing Clinton was not the only one to protect these people that were killed. They were all at fault. She is the one that’s running for President. They spent millions of dollars looking for a mole hill and the made one .

and you can’t build a castle on a budget to build a shabby garden shed. So it was the senate Bush and Reagan who did not allow for the budget to build that castle so security suffered. Not because of Hillary’s ability but because of the budget she was given by budget basses missions not situation basses missions. You can not protect a high risk military or embassy facility in a high risk region on the same budget you protect a low risk office building in the united states say like Trump tower.

How Congress handled the Bush email conflict is irrelevant to the email scandal of Hillary for a couple of reasons. Bush did not have open insecure personal servers that no one had access to except three people, one without a security clearance. Hillary’s email system was against the law. She willfully broke the law as Secretary of State and had several servers installed in her home because as her emails explain, she did not want anyone seeing her activity with the Clinton Foundation. It was actually inconvenient for her. Her selfish method caused more than one person to die. Just because she is a woman, she has to abide by the law the same as a man. She also has to answer for criminal behavior. I am not a Republican but I commend them for trying to get to the truth about Benghazi and her email crimes. The Democrats are disgusting for their support of a criminal running for president. If you clear your head, look at what Hillary has supported, worked for and signed off on, you have to see she is a dangerous warmonger. Her mental condition is questionable at best at this time and she has no right to be president.

No but Collen Powell had a private email on a public server that he erased all his emails on. Why aren’t they investigating him. I will tell you why. 1 he is a republican 2 he is not running for president. and 3 he is not a woman running for president. That is why Collen Powell Bush and Rove and many other republican politicians guilty of wrong doing like flint lead problems are left alone while Hillary is crucified for her mole hill.

Rove and the Whole Dirty Bunch should be in jail. The FBI cleared Hillary but you ass wipes just won’t let it die. This is all you are good for, digging in the dirt looking for the shit that is in your mind.

A bit of a nitpick of your comment, which is very good overall:
I’m in the financial industry, and Marcha Stewart did not violate securities law, and thus was not “sentenced to jail for a $68,000 illegal profit.”.
Her profit was not illegal.
She was accused and convicted only of lying and obstruction of justice on ” four counts of obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a well-timed stock sale”http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/05/news/companies/martha_verdict/
If Stewart had simply kept her mouth shut during her initial interviews, she probably would not have done any jail time.
Remember this if ever interviewed by police: They are permitted to lie to you (not that Stewart’s did…) but it’s a crime for you to lie to them.

Is it an egregious act by the police if “the lie” told to a suspect results in obtaining “the truth” about the crime? I don’t think so…and neither do the courts as long as the lie(s) are not so patently coercive as to make the suspect give up his rights against self-incrimination. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems on the surface. That’s why we armchair quarterbacks who have no background or experience in controversial, complex issues should bench ourselves and just sit on the sidelines until we have a more complete understanding. Until the entire law and order system can be indicted as being a rogue, corrupt, group intent on violating our rights rather than one dedicated to serving and protecting us….yes, I will respect them. There are bad apples in every service organization. Weed those out and prosecute them but don’t disrespect and hinder those who work within the law and all the other public constraints they’re under.

30 years as a prosecutor and defense attorney have convinced me that most police officers think of Constitutional rights only as something they need to find a way around, rather than something they should protect. It’s part of the “us versus them” mentality that dominates police culture. That mentality guarantees abusive behavior. There are a lot of good, honest cops but they can’t avoid concessions to the corrupt police culture. There are also plenty of prosecutors and judges who willingly torture logic and eschew honesty to avoid suppressing evidence. They enable and perpetuate police misbehavior. The culture has to change before approval ratings of police will improve.

For the last few decades, the media has been relentless in its attempt to smear Clinton and has stepped up their efforts to damage her image in advance of the Presidential election. A study conducted by Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Policies and Public Policy confirms that Clinton received almost twice as much negative coverage than Trump and other political figures. Further, the media continues to resurrect issues involving Clinton’s past history.

The obvious slant against Clinton by the media is no more clear than the approach exhibited by my local paper, San Jose Mercury. While the coverage of Clinton and the Democrats was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, the Mercury’s story on Clinton’s ringing endorsement by Obama was relegated on page 7 and was adjacent to yet another negative story regarding the Democratic party. The Mercury went further by adding two more negative stories as well as a political cartoon about the Democrats and Clinton. In contrast, coverage of Trump’s irresponsible request to Russia was placed on page 4 with the equivalent space taken by the political cartoon. The bias against Clinton could not be more overt.

Your explanation about the bias against Hillary is terrific. It seems not an hour goes by that one political pundit after another has to open their comments about Hillary with a qualification, namely that she is untrustworthy. They repeat and repeat this diatribe until everyone believes. You ask people who have an unfavorable opinion about Hillary just repeat the soundbites as if they can cite exactly why – but they can’t because there is no justification for the characterization. Every time that God-awful Trump opens that mouth of his, he offers another bombastic adjective for her and I won’t repeat it. He is reinforcing the words and everyone remembers it. Someone must have told him years ago if you keep repeating your words people will believe you. He is such a dangerous person and so insidious, preying on people who have no education and can’t see through his lies. I cannot fathom what they see in him. He is the Ugly American. Look up the definition – it fits him to a tee.

Because of that instance of “lost” e-mails (that were later found), the government instituted a policy where everyone IN government was supposed to use the government e-mail system. That way, all e-mails could be assured to be archived… just as the ones that you are referring to were.

As opposed to the Hillary e-mails, which were wiped when she wiped her server.

This damn country is split about 50. 50
And that is a product of poor leadership.
Clean the government out, put all new people in that works for the people. If you don’t your are asking for BIG TIME TROUBLE. Do.you w a nt a civil war, North and south a REVOLUTION.
THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES
BETTER WAKE UP TO THE SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENT ‘S AND THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS COMING OUR WAY

The Republicans control the Supreme court (at least they did until Scalia’s death), the House Representatives, the Senate, most of th egoernorships and state houses but you want to blame the Democrats for the state of the country?

It is frightening how few people understand this, or perhaps even know it, and have no sense of who is actually to blame for the state of the country…it is obviously the Republicans despite the denial of the ignorant

In the earliest days of our Republic, those people who helped build the government were referred to as Civil Servants. i’ll repeat for emphasis Civil Servants. Are they ever referred to with that title today ? No. It was an honor to serve mostly without payment for services. These days the election cycle starts months, years in advance and costs millions of dollars which could be better spent on childhood education and health than negative ads. People giving money expect access . Somehow the British system of a few months of electioneering then a vote seems to be effective. I’m not surprised so many of our elected officials are of the Republican party. The money is there..

My son once got into trouble at school for writing on the wall. His entire justfication for the act was ” Thomas did it and he wrote more than I did and he didn’t get in trouble for it!” The logic of a 7 year-old! I am glad to say he did not continue long with liberal thinking.

I think the point was that the Republicans are hypocrites. They don’t believe in the equal application of the law. They believe themselves to be above it, but use it as a cudgel against their political opponents.

So if this is true, you were okay with Thomas getting away scot free and you wanted your son punished to the full extent of the law? I commend you if you truly wanted your son punished regardless that others were breaking the same law and getting away with it. But don’t you think when your son didn’t see you saying anything about Thomas you gave him the impression that breaking the law didn’t have consequences. So it was really your fault for not calling Thomas problem that led your sin astray. Same on you.

As of several months ago, it was Republicans who’d Appointed at least, if not 8 (didn’t bother with the one) … AT LEAST 7 of past 8 appointees to Supreme Court, who, as appointed, where NOT ‘Pro-Life’. Such, of the SUPPOSEDLY, and YET CLAIMING, ‘pro-life PARTY. News, now decades, has generally been owned by… MURDOCK is it… and ‘sons’!?! Little Truth in what used to be thought ‘news’. Can I spell propaganda? Hmmm.

FYI, some vast gaps in your facts and history: In mid 1992, there was on the SCOTUS only one Justice appointed by a Democratic president, Byron White, a JFK appointment made 3 decades earlier. All other eight Justices were appointed by Republican presidents, who had made 10 consecutive SCOTUS appointments.

After 1992, Bill Clinton made 2 SCOTUS confirmations. But Clinton had accommodated to GOP obstructionism and asked Republican Orin Hatch (Senate Judiciary Chairman) for names of acceptable individuals. And from those suggestions, WJC nominated Ginsburg and Breyer.

Next, during GW Bush’s presidency, conservative Republican Justices Alito and Roberts were confirmed. So on the day Obama took office in 2009, 12 SCOTUS appointments had been made by Republicans since 1968 to just those 2 by WJC. So the GOP had made or suggested every SCOTUS appointment from 1968 to 2009 essentially picking every Justice on the 2009 SCOTUS..

The email server used by Rove was not in the White House. It was the email server of the RNC – Republican National Committee – and Rove did not run it. He had an account on the box & he used it for political email messages. Had he used the White House email server for political emails, that would be a violation of the Hatch Act.

Did he use the RNC server for official WH business? I don’t know. Maybe. But I guarantee he didn’t handle 50 million email messages in six years.

Remember that in 2001 when Bush came into office, email was still emerging in the government as a major tool for work functions & policies were not settled and promulgated the way they were after about 2007-08.

In fact, this email issue in the White House led to many policy changes about email across the government.

Well if it SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN DONE BACK IN 2001 and Rove was not punished for it while others were, shouldn’t Hillary and anyone else who witnessed that scandal have had the sound judgement NOT TO REPEAT IT ?????

Albert Einstein defined INSANITY as “doing the same things over and over and expecting different results” !!!!!

The so-called Plame scandal. Truth be told, twas the thuggish behavior of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Prosecutor in the Plame case, that was the real scandal. Conveniently omitted from this story is this: Fitzgerald knew from the get go that Richard Armitage–he was in the State Department–was the one who leaked Plane’s name to Robert Novak. The Dems, and their stenographers in the unbiased media, were accusing accusing Cheney et. al, but Fitzgerald knew from week one that these accusations were false. What did Fitzgerald do? Did he announce Armitage as the leaker, shut down the investigation and drag his sorry butt back to Chicago? No, he continued the investigation until he caught someone in Cheney’s office–Scotter Libby–in a perjury trap. THIS is the real scandal of the Plame episode — the prosecutor, whose charge was to find the person who outed Plame, knew who that person was from the get go, but chose to continue his “investigate” until he trapped someone in the Bush White House for something that had nothing to do with the original charge of his investigation. This episode was more about abuse of the Special Prosecutor law by a rogue investigator than seeking justice for Plame.

The US Attorneys scandal is an even bigger ruse. The “outrage” over Bush’s firing of the U.S. Attorneys was the attempt by Dems, yet again, to criminalize political differences. US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President; what Bush did was not only legal, it was/is standard operating procedure. Bill Clinton fired every US attorney in the country when he assumed the Presidency …… to no outcry at all…..because this is what Presidents do.

Patheti story. Did Rove get on TV and lie over and over? Before congress?

Also, these liberal lies are pathetic. There were WMDs in Iraq, as reported by your liberal NY Times. Yes, the intelligence was wrong, Did anyone mention hillary voted for the war and was seen hugging her beloved friend Osama bin laden>>

For those who took this article as comparing what Cheney, Bush and Rove did as a comparison to what Clinton did, please look again. This is about the Republican response to those two events and the presumed political actions behind both the inaction by the Republicans to investigate Cheney, Bush and Rove for heinous actions for political reasons and their overzealous and costly attack on Hillary Clinton, also for political reasons. The point being that the Republicans seem not to know what their job is… serving this country in the best interest of the American people, not the best interest of the Republican Party.

Believe what you want to believe, conservative or liberal but the truth of the matter is that the Republicans have protected their Republican Administrations from impeachments or treason, from the Reagan Contra to GW Bush numerous scandals. They all cause American deaths for their illegal politics involving foreign countries..

The Hillary private emails is a prime example of sweeping the GW bush/Cheney/Rove private emails deletions to hide the scandals. This brings Comey again into the spotlight of joining the Ethics Committee investigation on 2007. Comey was the head of the FBI so why didn’t he do as he is doing with Hillary’s emails? The Bush Administration deleted 22 MILLION private server emails, which by the way was set up by the RNC for non government work.

Bush and Rove were embroiled in two competing scandals — the Valerie Plame scandal, in which operatives for Vice Pres. Dick Cheney, including Rove and Scooter Libby, were accused of unmasking Valerie Plame, a CIA specialist in the black market for weapons of mass destruction, for purely partisan reasons, and the U.S. Attorney purge, in which Rove’s political operation in the White House was accused of ordering Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to purge eight U.S. attorneys who were qualified prosecutors and replace them with political hacks with little or no prosecutorial experience.

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15.6%

An early straw poll of members of the progressive group MoveOn.org shows a wide-open competition for liberal voters in the forthcoming 2020 Democratic presidential contest, NBC News reports. The most popular potential candidate was Beto O’Rourke at 15.6%, followed by joe Biden at 14.9%, and then Sen. Bernie Sanders with 13.1%.

Enumerati

29%

A new CNN poll finds President Trump’s approval rating for handling the Russia investigation dips to 29%, matching a low previously hit in June of this year. “But Robert Mueller’s approval rating is also down in the poll: 43% approve and 40% disapprove. That compares to a 48% approve to 36% disapprove split in early October. The dip in Mueller’s numbers comes almost entirely among independents, among whom approval has fallen 10 points to 36%.”

Enumerati

57%

A new NPR/PBS/Marist poll finds that 57% of Americans think President Trump should compromise on his border wall to prevent a government shutdown. Furthermore, nearly 69% of Americans do not consider building a border wall between the United States and Mexico to be an immediate priority for the next Congress.

Enumerati

$25,000

“Jessica Denson, a former staffer for President Donald Trump’s campaign, is fighting an order to pay nearly $25,000 for violating a nondisclosure agreement, according to court papers,” BuzzFeed News reports. “The award to the Trump campaign came out of arbitration — non-public proceedings the campaign pursued against Denson after she filed two lawsuits against it. Denson was ordered to pay $25,000 to the campaign in October, but the award wasn’t made public until Denson’s lawyers included it in court filings in New York County Supreme Court in late November.”

Enumerati

20

The Washington Post has instituted a new fact checking category — called “Bottomless Pinocchios” — for President Trump’s false claims that have been repeated at least 20 times and were originally rated Three or Four Pinocchios. “The Fact Checker has not identified statements from any other current elected official who meets the standard other than Trump. In fact, 14 statements made by the president immediately qualify for the list.”

Poetic Justice

Steve Bannon’s no longer calling important shots,
And his invitations to speak usually end in boycotts.
His latest speaking brouhaha
Came from the University of Montana,
Which canceled Bannon’s keynote at a conference on sex robots.

Verbatim

“Jesus loves Michael Cohen, but everybody else thinks he’s an idiot. He’s obviously a sleaze-oid grifter. And if I were a prosecutor, I wouldn’t base a prosecution on evidence given to me by Mr. Cohen.”

Verbatim

“Fake News has it purposely wrong. Many, over ten, are vying for and wanting the White House Chief of Staff position. Why wouldn’t someone want one of the truly great and meaningful jobs in Washington. Please report news correctly. Thank you!”

— President Trump, insisting on Tuesday that “he’s having no trouble finding a new chief of staff, despite having already burned through two such top aides and being turned down by his reported first choice,” Politico reports.

“We’ve had limited success in dealing with this President. His word isn’t good. Within 48 hours he reverses himself. It’s very difficult to enter into a long-term agreement.”

Verbatim

“These power grabs highlight one of the most disturbing facts about American politics today: The Republican Party has become institutionally indifferent to the health of democracy. It prioritizes power over principle to such an extreme degree that it undermines the most basic functioning of democracy. … In the long run, the GOP’s turn against democracy could well be a greater threat to the American experiment than anything President Trump has done.”